The heroine of this film is Elle Woods, an undergraduate studying fashion design at a Californian university. Elle is rather cruelly dumped by her ruthlessly ambitious upper-class boyfriend, Warner Huntington III, who has just been accepted by Harvard Law School and intends to be a Senator by the time he is 30. Warner considers that Elle is insufficiently serious and intellectual to marry a man like himself; as he puts it "I need a Jackie, not a Marilyn". (What Warner fails to consider is that, with Marilyn Monroe as a potential First Lady, JFK might have been elected by a landslide instead of having to rely on highly contentious results in Illinois and Texas to put him in the White House).
Actually, Warner's misgivings about Elle seem to have some foundation in reality, as she gives the impression of being a shallow, superficial airhead, concerned about little except her appearance and her clothes. (Elle appears to be from a wealthy family; I found myself wondering whether her character was modelled on Paris Hilton, especially as, like Paris, she has a pet Chihuahua). Elle, however, is determined to win Warner back and applies to Harvard Law School herself. Surprisingly, she is accepted, largely because she impresses the male admissions tutors by wearing a skimpy bikini while making her admission video. Once at Harvard, Elle discovers that Warner has now got engaged to Vivian, a snobbish upper-class brunette. After a difficult start, however, she finds herself coping surprisingly well with her academic work, wins an internship with a prestigious Boston law firm and even helps to defend Brooke, an old college friend charged with murdering her elderly husband.
James Berardinelli said of "Legally Blonde" that it takes a talented performer to make a dumb character likable as opposed to irritating, an opinion from which I would not dissent. Reese Witherspoon is, of course, a very talented performer, as evidenced by her well-deserved Oscar for "Walk the Line". Even she, however, (and here I would dissent from Mr Berardinelli's view) is unable to make Elle a character one can warm to. The script might tell us that beneath Elle's shallow exterior there is a highly intelligent and resourceful individual. Ms Wetherspoon, however, seemed unable to show us this; her demeanour, her ridiculously overdone dress-sense, her constant changes of hairstyle and (worst of all) her irritatingly high-pitched voice only served to reinforce the impression that beneath Elle's shallow exterior was an equally shallow interior.
Elle is the sort of character who in the eighties or nineties would have been played by Melanie Griffith- the film, indeed, has certain similarities with Griffith's "Born Yesterday", another film about a seemingly-dumb blonde with hidden depths. Griffith has always struck me as a much less versatile actress than Witherspoon, but in "Born Yesterday" she succeeded where Witherspoon failed, making her character Billie Dawn surprisingly likable.
Moreover, for a film which ostensibly has a "don't judge a book by its cover" message, there was a surprising amount of sexual stereotyping going on. According to this film, lesbians are all plain, dowdy and politically radical; gay men are all camp, narcissistic and hysterically over-emotional. They also, apparently, know everything there is to know about fashion designers, a subject about which straight men are woefully ignorant. Indeed, with the exception of the token "good guy" who becomes Elle's new boyfriend, straight men do not come out of this film any better than gays. Apart from the arrogant and self-obsessed Warner, there is a male law professor who turns out to be a creepy sexual predator, an unattractive nerd who cannot get a date without Elle's assistance and a poor-white-trash deadbeat living in (of course) a run-down old trailer. With the exception of Brooke's oddly-named stepdaughter Chutney, all the female characters are portrayed sympathetically. The formidable-seeming female professor turns out to be more decent than her male colleague, and even Vivian, who is initially portrayed as a social and intellectual snob and a prize bitch, goes through a change of heart and becomes Elle's best friend.
"Legally Blonde" is essentially a one-joke film, the joke being that although Elle might look, dress and behave like a dumb blonde bimbo, the sort of girl who (as Pamela Stephenson said about Kate Bush) needs an intellect like she needs a hole in the head, underneath the surface she has hidden qualities- not only academic intelligence but also kindness and strength of character. The problem with the film is that, unlike its heroine, it has no hidden depths. The dialogue is flat, the humour is forced and the characters are all stereotypes with whom I could not sympathise. Deep down, it's shallow.
Actually, Warner's misgivings about Elle seem to have some foundation in reality, as she gives the impression of being a shallow, superficial airhead, concerned about little except her appearance and her clothes. (Elle appears to be from a wealthy family; I found myself wondering whether her character was modelled on Paris Hilton, especially as, like Paris, she has a pet Chihuahua). Elle, however, is determined to win Warner back and applies to Harvard Law School herself. Surprisingly, she is accepted, largely because she impresses the male admissions tutors by wearing a skimpy bikini while making her admission video. Once at Harvard, Elle discovers that Warner has now got engaged to Vivian, a snobbish upper-class brunette. After a difficult start, however, she finds herself coping surprisingly well with her academic work, wins an internship with a prestigious Boston law firm and even helps to defend Brooke, an old college friend charged with murdering her elderly husband.
James Berardinelli said of "Legally Blonde" that it takes a talented performer to make a dumb character likable as opposed to irritating, an opinion from which I would not dissent. Reese Witherspoon is, of course, a very talented performer, as evidenced by her well-deserved Oscar for "Walk the Line". Even she, however, (and here I would dissent from Mr Berardinelli's view) is unable to make Elle a character one can warm to. The script might tell us that beneath Elle's shallow exterior there is a highly intelligent and resourceful individual. Ms Wetherspoon, however, seemed unable to show us this; her demeanour, her ridiculously overdone dress-sense, her constant changes of hairstyle and (worst of all) her irritatingly high-pitched voice only served to reinforce the impression that beneath Elle's shallow exterior was an equally shallow interior.
Elle is the sort of character who in the eighties or nineties would have been played by Melanie Griffith- the film, indeed, has certain similarities with Griffith's "Born Yesterday", another film about a seemingly-dumb blonde with hidden depths. Griffith has always struck me as a much less versatile actress than Witherspoon, but in "Born Yesterday" she succeeded where Witherspoon failed, making her character Billie Dawn surprisingly likable.
Moreover, for a film which ostensibly has a "don't judge a book by its cover" message, there was a surprising amount of sexual stereotyping going on. According to this film, lesbians are all plain, dowdy and politically radical; gay men are all camp, narcissistic and hysterically over-emotional. They also, apparently, know everything there is to know about fashion designers, a subject about which straight men are woefully ignorant. Indeed, with the exception of the token "good guy" who becomes Elle's new boyfriend, straight men do not come out of this film any better than gays. Apart from the arrogant and self-obsessed Warner, there is a male law professor who turns out to be a creepy sexual predator, an unattractive nerd who cannot get a date without Elle's assistance and a poor-white-trash deadbeat living in (of course) a run-down old trailer. With the exception of Brooke's oddly-named stepdaughter Chutney, all the female characters are portrayed sympathetically. The formidable-seeming female professor turns out to be more decent than her male colleague, and even Vivian, who is initially portrayed as a social and intellectual snob and a prize bitch, goes through a change of heart and becomes Elle's best friend.
"Legally Blonde" is essentially a one-joke film, the joke being that although Elle might look, dress and behave like a dumb blonde bimbo, the sort of girl who (as Pamela Stephenson said about Kate Bush) needs an intellect like she needs a hole in the head, underneath the surface she has hidden qualities- not only academic intelligence but also kindness and strength of character. The problem with the film is that, unlike its heroine, it has no hidden depths. The dialogue is flat, the humour is forced and the characters are all stereotypes with whom I could not sympathise. Deep down, it's shallow.